Have you ever been promised something about a product, but came to find out that it was untrue? This is the whole principle behind the concept of deceptive advertising. Advertisers and corporations have been scrutinized over the years about their practices of falsely stating information for maximizing profits. The main regulatory bodies that identify deceptive advertising are the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The FTC sees the product side of business and the FDA oversees the claims made on foods and drugs. An unfair ad is defined as one in which the advertiser withholds information, when not disclosed could result in injuries to consumers. A deceptive ad is defined as ads containing explicit or implied claims or omissions that are likely to "mislead a consumer acting reasonably under the circumstances."

For years the definition of deceptive advertising was very broad. The only reliance was on consumer behavior studies that would try to clarify the definition. FTC has a policy in which advertisers and corporations can look to for structure to see if their ads are in deed deceptive (http://www.lawpublish.com/deceptive_advertising.html). The FTC not only serves to fight deceptive advertising, but also has many roots into all aspects of consumer protection (http://www.ftc.gov/). Another form of deceptive advertising is subliminal messages. Now that this has come to the attention of the public, there is now investigations led by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) (http://www.buchenroth.com/ban.html).

Deceptive advertising has caused severe financial penalties to corporations who have engaged in deceptive advertising. Lawyers, advertisers, and corporations have been amazed with the increase in penalties given to non- compliant advertisements (http://www.lawpublish.com/money.htm). There have been huge amounts of litigation in this field. Big names like Nike and American Family Publishers. Here are a list of some of the court cases that have been tried for deceptive advertising.

>Nike- http://www.globalexchange.org/economy/corporations/nike/lawsuit.html

>American family publishers- http://ny.yahoo.com/external/wcbs_radio/stories/8898063713.html

>Apple- http://maccentral.com/news/9901/26.ftc.shtml

Some countries in the world actually encourage their business to use honest ads. Japan and Sweden are two of these that stand out. In the United States deceptive advertising is illegal, but still used throughout commerce. May be the U.S. should take a lesson from these countries that have been promoting honest ads for centuries (http://www.nolo.com/mwad/1e.html).

Many corporations have used terms in advertising that have been embraced by consumers to sell their products. For example, the term "Green". Companies may use the word "green" to illustrate that they are pro- environment by not using rain forest material. This false statement to the public would deem to be deceptive (http://www.edf.org/pubs/EDF-Letter/1996/Jan/j_greenad.html). Some places have tried to capitalize on cultural products by saying that they are genuine native goods (http://www.dragondata.com/~breed/forums/wwwboard/messages/140.html).

Some corporations portray some products as a social must, when they are proven to be harmful to ones life (http://ash.org/papers/h400.htm).

Deceptive Advertising is very prevalent in society. The only way to combat these issues is to be an alert consumer. When something looks to good to be true, then it probably is. The FTC, FDA, and now the FCC can only do so much to regulate the advertising industry. Hopefully, the advertisement agencies develop honest ads like that of Japan and Sweden.